UK climate extremes becoming new normal: Report

Climate extremes once considered unusual are increasingly becoming part of everyday life in the UK as rising temperatures reshape the country’s climate, according to the latest State of the UK Climate report.

The report, covering 2025 and placing recent changes in a historical context, highlights continued warming across the UK, with temperature extremes showing some of the most significant changes.

“2025 was the UK’s warmest year on record, the sixth time this record has been broken in the 21st century so far,” said Mike Kendon, a Met Office climate information scientist and lead author of the report.

He added that the last four years were among the five warmest years ever recorded in the UK, with temperatures rising by around 0.25 degrees Celsius per decade since the 1980s.

The latest 10-year period, from 2016 to 2025, was 1.33C warmer than the 1961-1990 average, the report found.

Kendon said warming patterns were shifting across the country, with northern and upland areas experiencing conditions previously associated with warmer regions in southern England.

“Think of this warming as moving north and uphill,” he said, adding that areas such as the Vale of York and Lancashire now have similar annual temperatures to those experienced by Greater London between 1961 and 1990.

The report noted that annual average temperatures of 11C (51.8F) were almost unknown across the UK in the 1980s, but by 2025 nearly one-fifth of the country’s land surface had reached that level.

Temperature extremes are also intensifying. In parts of southeast England, the hottest day of the year has warmed by 4.5C, three times the increase seen in annual average temperatures. The number of days exceeding 30C has quadrupled in areas such as Greater London.

“Every year is adding to the body of evidence showing climate change in the UK,” Kendon said, describing the country as experiencing “historic and unprecedented change.”

Professor Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, said the report provided evidence of climate change through weather observations.

“Climate change has been described by scientists for many years but is now increasingly being felt by UK population in their own homes and communities,” she said.